We’ve had our vacation to Disney planned, re-planned, figured, reconnoitered, documented, and settled for a few weeks now before all this hubbub started. If you remember, my wife is a Disney aficionado. She bleeds pixie dust and thinks there’s a magical field around the Disney theme parks that keeps bad spirits away. So a trip to Disney World (or Land, can’t keep them straight) was always the first vacation choice for her.

Okay, But,…

Since I’m the nerd of the household, I’m also the one that mostly wrangles the bills. Let me say, the trip she planned is EXPENSIVE. It’s not that we don’t enjoy ourselves, quite the contrary, but it’s still pretty pricey. Because of that, we opted for the Vacation insurance that came with the package deal.

So what Is Vacation Insurance Already!

On many or most of the package vacation trips, those booked that include airlines, hotels, and park tickets, vacation insurance is offered at an additional cost. Vacation insurance covers for if/when something comes up and you can’t go on the vacation. Work, sickness, change-your-mind (us, but I’m getting to that), whatever reason, as long as you give them 3-4 days advance notice.

The insurance itself usually runs around $150-200 dollars, but depending on the size of the trip, it’s a small fee compared to losing out on the entire amount if little Timmy has to get that last-minute appendectomy, or the Boss gives you a choice of finishing that big report or,… not. It refunds the vacation money, so you can try again at a different time, if you so choose.

But is Insurance for a Vacation Really Necessary?

Normally I’m not a big proponent of getting insurance on just any old thing. But we have a few examples recently of things happening that can really have an unforeseen effect on planned events.

• American Airlines shutting down nearly a thousand flights, causing people to be stranded at airports for days at a time.
• Many airlines are no longer honoring other company’s ’switch-a-flight’ program: Where if you miss your flight, you can get a seat on another carrier going to the same destination.
• Gas and fuel prices skyrocketing because of $130+ dollar-a-barrel crude oil.
• Slumped Economy (whether you believe Warren Buffet, and that we’re in a recession, or Ben Bernanke, that we’re in a ’slowing economy’).

All of these factors throw a new spin on plans you could have finalized and paid for months ago. Having a fallback plan for recovering your vacation funds is nice to have, and realistically, you would have spent the money on T-shirts and trinkets on the trip anyway, so it’s not like it wouldn’t have been spent.

Ok, I’m Convinced, But Why Bring it up Now?

I was able to take advantage of the vacation insurance in a slightly different way. We had originally locked in our rates a few months ago, having spent hours (days) searching the web (globe) for the best deals. And when I say we, I mean my wife.

Now come to find out, since she never really stopped looking for cheaper trips that there are some MUCH cheaper alternatives now, if we’re willing to stay at a slightly LESS happy place during our trip (specifically, NOT a Disney theme hotel). When I heard about the price difference I almost fainted.

So now we’re going to exercise our insurance option, get the refund, and purchase the new package, AND save 40% overall.

Yes, it’s the Happiest Place in the World!

Are your vacation plans being affected by the gas crunch/economy?? Let us know your tips and tricks for having a wonderful summer vacation!

I was more than a bit surprised. Here’s my story.

I’ve always used the internet to get my insurance rather than with a live broker, just because it’s easier and I ‘detest’ some of the hard-sell tactics that some of the brokers/agents use. Not to say they all use these tactics, but some I’ve encountered did. I used various on-line insurance aggregators, and also a few direct company insurance sign-up sites.

My current insurance company, after one incident a little over a year ago which I was not at fault for (but the insurance company had to pay for because the other car turned out to be stolen) actually dropped the cost of my insurance by about $19/year. Pretty outstanding if you ask me.

AIG Insurance Rocks!!

When I filled in the forms on all the other sites, I never found a rate close to the one that I’m getting from AIG. (although I did find ONE little no-name insurance company that beat AIG by $8/year, but didn’t include very much for towing costs. One tow would have cost me more than the difference in prices).

Overall the experience with the web sites was better than I have had in the past. I tried
Esurance.com CarInsurance.com Geico.com and Insweb.com.

Esurance – The cute commercials and the pretty almost-Anime female spokesperson is also found on this easy to use website. The questions were straightforward, and I had a quote in a little under 5 minutes total. Unfortunately, they were about $450/year more than my current AIG insurance.

CarInsurance.com – CarInsuranc.com is an aggregator site (gives you quotes from multiple insurance companies simultaneously). It was also fairly easy to use, maybe marginally more difficult than Esurance. I received quotes back from 4 different insurance companies, all ranging from $400/year more to $750/year more. (Yikes!)

Geico.com – Again, the spokesperson (spokesgekko?) from the commercial is also on the web site. The site is very easy to use, similar to Esurance. Total time was about 10 minutes, maybe I just typed slower here. The quote was $280/year more, an improvement over the others, but still nowhere near what I am already getting from AIG.

Insweb.com – This is another aggregator site, and one that I originally used when I got AIG. Unfortunately, in the last few years, I can’t tell that anything has changed on this site. It only took about 7 minutes to come back with the quotes, but out of the 5 that came back, 4 were requiring I talk to a broker to get the ‘actual’ quotes. If I had wanted to talk to an insurance broker I wouldn’t have used the internet anyway, so this kind of negates the whole reason for going on-line to begin with.

Oddly enough, I did get one quote from an insurance company I had never heard of before that came in UNDER AIG on this site. I was curious enough to look at the coverages and, while they looked good, the towing max payment was only $90. Since most tow trucks won’t even hook up for less than a hundred bucks. I could see the difference in pay going out the window the first time I had to have one of my vehicles moved farther than around the block. That and the no-name status of the company rang a few ‘Danger Will Robinson’ signals.

Overall – I’m pleased to say that the state of the art in on-line insurance quotes is much better than it was a couple of years ago. With the noted exception, every site I went to was able to provide me a quote without having to talk to a broker or agent. The display of coverages and options for selecting different coverages and different amounts was intuitive and easy to use. I doubt that the live agent has to worry too much about being completely replaced by the web, but for people like me who are comfortable with an all-web experience, it’s there for the taking.